The "Pedestrians' Paradise" tradition abruptly ended when a 27-year-old man named Tomohiro Katō reportedly struck five individuals with a truck at an intersection near the main Japan Railways station of Akihabara on Sunday, June 8, 2008. He then allegedly proceeded to leave the vehicle and stab 12 people on the streets. By the following Sunday, "Pedestrians' Paradise" was put on hold until further notice.

The banning of fictional depictions of child abuse would likely be as
meaningless as the banning of fictional depictions of car chasing with
the aim toward reducing motor vehicle accidents in real life.

Content in itself is not the issue--Child pornography has been outlawed
because the methods involved in production involve real children in possibly
abusive circumstances. How the material was produced is what makes it criminal,
not what impression it conveys on the audience.

Child pornography involving real children being sexually abused is horrid
beyond words. For that very reason, I find it reprehensible to mix together
such acts of human misery and suffering with illusionary fantasy that exists
only in the author's imagination. Widening the definition of child pornography
to include fictional material belittles the gravity of real sex abuse.

Many convicted criminals also cite the Bible as their inspiration of
conducting astonishingly savage acts, and yet few would attribute the Bible
as the root cause of such criminal behavior. Why?--Because free societies
accept the principle that people are responsible for their own actions.

It is very dangerous to restrict the actions and rights of citizens
based on the principle that some limited number of individuals may act
irresponsibly. This is the equivalent of removing knives from the household
kitchen because someone used a meat cleaver to commit a crime. Again, this
logic is unbelievably reckless as well.

Furthermore, crime statistics published by the Japanese police themselves
show no causality between the proliferation of erotic material and sex
crimes. The crime rate has dramatically decreased since WW2 while the availability
of erotica and violent fictional entertainment has risen by leaps and bounds
during the same period.

It is easily imaginable that an endless cycle of accusations and denials
will unfold regarding establishing the "true age" of fictional characters.
Authors and publishers will more than likely attempt to proclaim that the
characters look young, but they are actually above the age of 18. Physical
attributes vary between widely depending on race and ethnicity, not to
mention fictional non-human characters.

Either an ever increasing set of symbols will be deemed to be inappropriate
to be linked to a core human attribute--human sexuality--or the futility
of the ban will lead the law to become impotent over all.

Even today, numerous adult manga publications have self censorship standards
that are mind-boggling. Authors have complained about how some editors
have insisted on having all female characters appearing in their works
be endowed with large breasts because drawing women as they appear more
like in real life was deemed "too childish looking."

The value attributed to works of literature and art change over time.
The works of modern art and literature from the last two centuries are
filled with examples where they were deemed to be vile, corruptive trash
by contemporary authorities, but now these same works enjoy high status
as priceless cultural treasures.

A ban on fictional depictions of minor engaged in sexual situations
has the very real potential to brand individuals as sex offenders even
though they have had no sexual contact with real people. I believe there
could be no legal justification for destroying people's lives simple because
they drew doodles on paper, but the proposed ban would create such a legal
precedence.

I am absolutely certain that history will not look back kindly upon
such a ban, and it will join a long list of colossal failures of regulatory
policy, such as the prohibition of alcohol in the US between 1920 to 1933,
various sodomy laws, the comic book code, and bans on socialist literature
in Japan during the prewar era.

It is important to note that all these failed moral crusades were led
by virtuous and diligent individuals intent on making the world a better
place.

documents leading
to the creation of the bill and information extracted by Tokyo Metropolitan
Assembly members indicate that BL (Boys Love,) Yaoi, Ladies Comics, romantic
Shojo Manga, and many publications aimed toward girls and women are being
targeted.

Why are women's publications more likely to be affected
by this bill? Because the common visual style in such material is not as
graphic as with men's publications, and therefore "not erotic, but dangerous
subject matter" criteria for regulation will probably have an impact of
women more than men's manga and anime fictio

It's been a few years, but otaku hunting (or "otaku gari" as it's known in Japanese) is back in the headlines. This time, a pair of men attacked the victims in the Nihonbashi section of Osaka, an area similar to Tokyo's Akihabara.

Given all the qualifying facts in the Whorley case, one might ask, why should anyone care? Setting aside questions of fundamental justice for the moment, the answer is: because cartoons and drawings aren't child pornography and should not be treated as such under the law.

Death Note has been phenomenally successful in its native country, spawning anime, three live action movies, a video game and a prose novel. It has also - somewhat unsurprisingly, given its amoral nature - inspired some copycat crimes, including one Belgian murder where the killer claimed to Death Note's fictional killer, Kira. It'll be interesting to see what, if any, steps Warners will take to avoid similar controversy from this more mainstream movie version.